The Binocular House Hudson Valley New York 2007 The slow approach to the house is the initial phase of movement that instigates the organization of movement . . .

Photography by Richard Barnes

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Richard Barnes

Photograph by Richard Barnes

Photograph by Richard Barnes

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Richard Barnes

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Michael Bell

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Photograph by Michael Bell

Photograph by Michael Bell

Photograph by Bilyana Dimitrova

Michael Bell Design

Gefter-Press House Hudson Valley New York 2007 The slow approach to the house is the initial phase of movement that
instigates the organization of movement . . .

The Gefter-Press is
sited on a twelve-acre property accessed by crossing a quarter mile
expanse of farming fields before passing into a forested site. The
slow approach to the house is the initial phase of movement that
instigates the organization of movement and time in the building. A
series of planar organizations, the pictorial depth of the approach and
view through the house, is counter to the shallow spaces and movements
of the interior where the buildings is as narrow as ten feet.

The
programming of the building is coordinated with the visual depth—social
relations are coordinated by floor heights, relations to grade (above,
at or below grade) and diagonal vistas though the house and across the
courtyard. The buildings structural glazing system—nine by fourteen
foot wide insulated glazing units—allows a gaze to pass through the
private as well as public spaces. The glazing has two details: it is
either flush with the building volume and projected inboard of the
structural framing (on the east/west elevations) or six inches outboard
of the structural framing (on the north/south elevations). The sills
are recessed two inches below floor level. The effect it to project the
interior margins of the building volume outward and to asymptotically
flatten the exterior view against the interior surfaces—the background
is elastically pulled to the foreground and the sense of a
middle-ground is diminished. The interior is precisely defined but also
it dissolves into the extended spaces and clearings in the forest.
Vision is immediate and close and also distant. The simultaneity brings
the space of the forest into the immediate circumstances of private
life. The house can be opened to form a single volume: the two bedrooms
open with interior sliding doors that match the glazing systems and
form two oculus opening: when approaching the house they form a
binocular effect that bifurcates the singular vantage of the house. The
minor dimensions of a relatively small building cross a threshold
opening to the wider field of the site.